Brain-harvesting case troubles Maine officials

PORTLAND – State prosecutors are backing away from their assertion that no crime was committed after a second allegation that a private brain-harvesting operation used misleading tactics.

Jim Allen, 65, of Portland said that the day after his wife died he spoke to a man who was paid by a Maryland research institute to obtain brains. He said he never authorized his wife’s entire brain to be sent to the lab.

“I never – if I lived to be 1,000 – would have allowed them to remove her brain completely,” Allen told the Portland Press Herald.

The newspaper reported on Sunday that 99 brains from bodies taken to the state medical examiner’s office were shipped to the Bethesda, Md.-based Stanley Medical Research Institute between 1999 and 2003.

Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe originally insisted no laws were broken, but spokesman Chuck Dow later altered the stance to say that no laws were broken by the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

“Whether others may have broken the law, I can’t say that,” Dow said. “Suffice it to say that these new allegations are very troubling.”

Allen said he does not recall the name of the man he spoke to about a donation. But a consent form from the Aug. 3, 2001, phone call identifies the man as Matthew S. Cyr of Bucksport.

The document also says the call was witnessed by Lorie Stevens, who has shared a Bucksport phone number with Cyr.

At the time, Cyr was the state’s funeral inspector. He was paid $1,000 to $2,000 for each brain he sent to the Stanley Institute between 1999-2003, records show, and received more than $150,000 in the four-year period.

Jim Allen said his wife, who was a registered nurse, would have wanted to help others by donating her organs. So he made a donation to the New England Organ Bank, which coordinates organ transplants in Maine.